As GM stares down the barrel of bankruptcy—oh wait, they’re already bankrupt. My bad. You see, I was reading Ed Welburn’s rant on GM’s FastLane blog. Eddy’s pissed-off at Gerald Sindell’s “Open Letter to GM CEO Fritz Henderson,” which says GM’s designs reek of “Older white guys wearing suits to the office in Detroit, except for one woman and one black guy.” As the one black guy in question, Welburn’s on the warpath. Hence my confusion. I mean, with GM in C11 and all, you think the head of design would have something better to do than accuse the media of race baiting—even if it is. Which it isn’t. To steal a line from another legendary zombie, can we talk?
Regular readers will know that we’ve taken Washington Post carmudgeon Warren Brown to task for his shameless Motown cheerleading up to and through the federal bailout. You may have also noticed a huge disconnect between Warren’s blind bailout boosterism and his paper’s entirely skeptical stance on federal intervention in the U.S. automotive industry. In an ironic twist of fate, Warren’s decided to take the WaPo’s latest buyout offer—and do so with all of the grace displayed by his bailout boosting pals in The Motor City. He leaves the paper spilling vitriol all over his colleague’s rejection of Uncle Sam’s “investment” in Government Motors.
USA Today is in the thrall of . . . the Ford Escape Hybrid. As is the President of these here United States, who traded his gas-hungry Chrysler 300C for the gas – electric trucklette. No surprise, then, that we’ve heard rumors of shortages. Well, not rumors, exactly. More like an open admission by FoMoCo’s El Presidente del Americas. “We are constrained by the amount of components, including batteries, that the supply base can provide us,” Mark Fields said in December ’08. Same spin again in January ’09, via a Blue Oval Boy on Edmunds. The scuttlebutt: Ford loses money on every Escape Hybrid they sell; so it sells as few as possible. Of course, that doesn’t stop The Glass House Gang from using the vehicle to earn brownie points with the MSM . . .
TTAC’s Google ranking on the whole GM bankruptcy deal has delivered unto us a few shout-outs from the MSM. Now that the C11 deed is done, public radio’s “The Takeaway” ’phoned this afternoon—to ask what they should ask GM marketing maven and dealer destroyer Mark LaNeve. Other than that, Al Jazeera. The Arab TV service called to arrange to interview about the collapse of the artist formerly known as the world’s largest automaker. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I’m worried that the network might use my comments about GM’s epic fail, the federal government’s abandonment of free market principles and GM’s bleak future to fuel the fires of anti-Americanism. I am, believe it or not, a patriot. On the other hand, it is what it is. America’s greatest strength is our citizens’ freedom of speech. Of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I? What say you? Should I accept or decline this invitation to discuss the dark side of America’s corporate culture and centralized governance?
Because people with pom-poms always have great insights. Scott Burgess of the Detroit News and Mark Phelan of the Detroit Free Press have driven the Cruze-based Volt mule, written nearlyidentical rah-rah routines, and will be taking questions on the vehicle at 2 p.m. Eastern over at GM’s Fastlane Blog. Ironically (or not . . . who can tell anymore?) titled “Journalists To Discuss Chevy Volt,” the discussion is more likely to be indicative of the state of automotive “journalism” (shilling at the OEM’s blog? Really?) than revealing of anything of actual interest about the Volt. But by all means, surf over and ask a few awkward questions for us. For question ideas, start here.
I’m no stranger to this ungodly hour. Having raised four daughters, I know why the early bird gets the worm: Lumbricus Terrestris hasn’t had time for a cup of coffee. Still, needs must. TTAC may have crested 1m viewers per month, but we’re still eyeball based. Our survival still depends on ad revenue. So we need to give as many potential readers as possible a “taste.” Hence the early hour. I’m about to get picked up by a local car service to take me to a radio station to argue against CAFE standards and for a gas tax. Should be fun. Tell all your friends! Well the ones with small children. Thanks. [click here to listen to the interview on WNYC Radio and Public Radio International’s “The Takeaway”]
The folks at Mashable love to measure buzz, twits and general internet exposure, and they’ve come up with a few graphs that show how the automakers are weathering the current unpleasantness. And they show that (by the numbers, anyway) Ford is the most new-media savvy of the American automakers. Which means that on the straightforward (and questionably effective) metrics, Ford comes out on top. Most Twitter followers. Most Twitter updates. Most Youtube video tags. Most Flickr photos. Stop me if you’re getting too excited. But despite the huge numerical advantages that Ford boasts in the YouTwitosphere, the most interesting fact is that Ford is the least-covered automaker in actual news stories but most-covered in blog posts. Which means a lot of Ford’s measurable popularity might be attributable to the lack of bad news about it in the mainstream media. Not taking a bailout probably helped, too. Either way, you can’t help but wonder what the benefit really is of most of this “new marketing.”
“Whilst? Are you actually British, or are you just an inbred Appalachian hillbilly moonshiner?” That one didn’t make it through the moderating process. Until now. In the normal course of events, I delete any comments that attack TTAC’s editorial stance or style, and invite the commentator to discuss our choices off-line. Rest assured, I can stand the heat. It’s just that meta comments rapping TTAC’s “bias” or piss-poor prose—rather than focusing on the content itself—drag the comment section off-topic. (It’s not all about us.) Normally, comments like “why did you publish that” and “your writing sucks” constitute a small percentage of the total number deleted. But as Detroit’s defenders have had something of a wake-up call, I’m not encountering as many “See you at Death Watch 23,344 asshole!” and “Fuck you you import-loving faggot” remarks. Which gives us a little breathing room to address the stance and style issues. I’ll explain myself after the jump. But feel free to diss our writing or content choices below without their consideration. And for this post, the no-flame rule is suspended (within reason).
Yes, it’s a post about something other than the feds getting the US taxpayer to squeal like a pig to save Chrysler and GM from the uncomfortable lesson that actions have—OMG—consequences. In fact, the closer we get to the Big Kahuna of GM’s C11, the more determined I am to provide car-related posts. After a regrettable hiatus, car reviews, both large and small, are back. “Piston Slap” and “Hammer Time” continue apace (thanks, guys). And I’m bound and determined to get some more product reviews headed your way. In that spirit of “Oh, yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone,” here’s the inside dope on GT5, via escapistmagazine.com, after le jump. Spock! Damage control! It appears we are not digitally configured for damage, Captain. That’s a relief. Indeed. Bones. Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a videogame producer. I can’t just add source code like that! The whole game could lock up and crash. Do what you can.
Remember the whole “we do not want to run the automakers” routine? Cue up the laugh track. President Obama’s PTFOA has intervened to halve Chrysler’s ad budget during its taxpayer-funded bankruptcy, reports Automotive News [sub]. Chrysler had requested $134 million for advertising during its alleged nine-week bankruptcy. That request was halved by the PTFOA because that body “believed that it was not feasible to not spend anything on marketing and advertising for fear of eroding the image of the brand,” says Chrysler Chapter 11 consultant, Robert Manzo, in court documents. We knew Chrysler’s DIP budget was being drawn up “in consultation with the Treasury,” but this is the first glimpse of a struggle between Chrysler management and its government paymasters.
You know what I mean: it’s so bad, it’s good. And make no mistake about it: Ford’s fiestamovement.com is really bad. Garishly, gloriously, car-crash-by-the-side-of-the-road bad. We’re talking 100 pre-release Fiesta “agents” assigned reality TV show style missions by someone who smokes a large quantity of top shelf cannabis on a regular basis. “Take someone to the ocean who’s never been” [LSD optional?]; “Go to your favorite fast food joint order one of everything and give it away” [heads-up Ford: the days when McDonalds sold three items are well and truly over]; and “Blindfold a friend and take them away” [lawyer on speed dial]. It’s friggin’ endless. And the best/worst bit? ALL the agents blog. Twitter. YouTube. There hasn’t been such a surreal yet completely earnest multimedia agglomeration of [tangentially] auto-related inanity since, well, ever. I’m telling you: Ford has a major hit on its hands here.
We got a few “so what’s” a couple of wild-ass days ago when we whispered that Chrysler would be launching a new ad campaign using government funds earmarked for struggling parts suppliers. But setting aside the supplier screwing (yes, advertisers “supply” Chrysler, and with no production, why worry about components?), this means we will be treated to the launch of yet another New Chrysler. This will mark the second such dawning in just about a year. AdAge (via Automotive News [sub]) confirms the rumor, reporting that the responsible ad firm (BBDO, Detroit) also just happens to be Chrysler’s second-largest unsecured creditor ($58.1 million). And Judge Gonzalez still gets to decide whether the Mad Men will be paid out by the government’s “critical vendor” program. Anyway, the new campaign is being termed “educational,” with Chryco spokesfolks explaining “companies in this kind of situation need to communicate more rather than less.” Because sometimes having the President for a pitchman just isn’t enough.
Holman Jenkins offers his analysis of the Motown meltdown under the TTAC-usurping title “The Truth About Cars and Trucks.” According to the Wall Street Journal scribe, we should blame the current domestic auto industry implosion on the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) monopoly on Detroit production. Oh, and the manipulation of federal law to protect same. I think. “For three decades, the Big Three were able to survive precisely because they skimped on quality and features in the money-losing sedans they were required under Congress’s fuel economy rules to build in high-cost UAW factories. In return, Washington compensated them with the hothouse, politically protected opportunity to profit from pickups and SUVs. Doesn’t sound much like what you hear incessantly from your Congressman, about how Detroit’s problems are all due to management ‘incompetence’ in deciding to build ‘gas guzzling’ SUVs, does it?” Uh, it kinda does. And I’d like to see a bit more detail on this assertion, please: “Washington’s latest fuel-economy rules actually reward manufacturers for increasing the size and weight of some vehicles.”
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